Malcolm Gladwell: Entrepreneurs are anything but risk-takers - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/01/18/100118fa_fact_gladwell

<comment><USER2> Maybe it is the recent spate of articles taking down a number Gladwell arguments, but I look at anything he writes at this point from the perspective of, is he being contrarian for the sake of being contrarian - and based on the abstract (no full article available to me), it seems like that is the case, once more.

The examples - John Paulson, a hedge fund trader. First - is a hedge funder making trades an entrepenuer to begin with? Second - trading, in exotic securities, short, no less, is the definition of risk. He can call it predatory, but to say it isn't risky is ridiculous.

Also - Ted Turner. Again, maybe the full article has more, but his one example pales against his other risks, such as launching CNN, a 24 hour cable news network when no one had even heard of such a thing or thought it would ever work.

</comment><comment><USER3> The basic premise is that a predator does low-risk deals with a large upside. And they can do that because they are well-informed. Turner knew he can use his billboard business to advertise a TV station. Paulson buying CDS's because his research showed the real estate bubble was about to burst.

It's an interesting thesis, though it does suffer from survivorship bias.

I thought the most interesting part was data from the book, "The Illusions of Entrepreneurship", by Scott Shane.

 _New-business success is clearly correlated with the size of initial capitalization. The data show that organizing as a corporation is best. But failed entrepreneurs tend to organize as sole proprietorships. Writing a business plan is a must; failed entrepreneurs rarely take that step. Taking over an existing business is always the best bet; failed entrepreneurs prefer to start from scratch. Ninety per cent of the fastest-growing companies in the country sell to other businesses; failed entrepreneurs usually try to sell to consumers, and, rather than serving customers that other businesses have missed, they chase the same people as their competitors do. The list goes on: they underemphasize marketing; they don't understand the importance of financial controls; they try to compete on price._

</comment><comment><USER4> Apparent correction: Some entrepeneurs are anything but risk takers.

</comment><comment><USER5> The abstract doesn't talk about this, but one school of thought suggests that entrepreneurs aren't necessarily risk-takers, they are just overly optimistic.

I think that is true. If you're overly optimistic or over-confident, you're more likely to do things that others consider as risky (because they don't seem risky to you)

</comment><comment><USER6> Interesting idea, but am not convinced by his argument that being a "predator" is so far removed from risk-taking.</comment>


One day with Palm Pre (a fantasy) - <AUTHOR> http://palmwebosblog.com/palm-pre/one-day-with-palm-pre-a-story-of-technology-fiction-soon-to-be-a-reality/

<comment><USER2> I'm sorry, but I didn't find anything in this article that highlighted the differences between a Pre and, say, a Blackberry or iPhone...</comment>


TerminalHero. My Response to Guitar Hero :) - <AUTHOR> http://ciemborowicz.pl/terminalhero/ Some time ago I had to write a small academic project in Perl. I wrote this and it's so cool that I feel I should share it with you:).
http://ciemborowicz.pl/terminalhero
https://github.com/ciembor/TerminalHero
Today I published PKGBUILD for ArchLinux, but it would be nice to write build scripts for other distros like Debian/Ubuntu or Gentoo. Contribution is welcomed;).
Have a fun! <comment><AUTHOR> Some time ago I had to write a small academic project in Perl. I wrote this and it's so cool that I feel I should share it with you:).

<http://ciemborowicz.pl/terminalhero>

<https://github.com/ciembor/TerminalHero>

Today I published PKGBUILD for ArchLinux, but it would be nice to write build scripts for other distros like Debian/Ubuntu or Gentoo. Contribution is welcomed;).

Have a fun!</comment>


The Development of the C Language* by Dennis Ritchie (1996) - <AUTHOR> http://sites.harvard.edu/~lib113/reference/c/c_history.html <comment><USER2> More details on "Primeval" C can be found here: [https://www.bell- labs.com/usr/dmr/www/primevalC.html](https://www.bell- labs.com/usr/dmr/www/primevalC.html)

Just recently, fragments of the earliest Unix OS source code and B interpreter were discovered [0]. Now, the earliest Unix for the PDP-7 and PDP-11 [1] can run under emulation thanks to the incredible efforts of Warren Toomey and others at the Unix Heritage Society [2].

[0] [https://github.com/DoctorWkt/pdp7-unix](https://github.com/DoctorWkt/pdp7-unix)

[1] [https://github.com/DoctorWkt/unix- jun72](https://github.com/DoctorWkt/unix-jun72)

[2] [http://www.tuhs.org](http://www.tuhs.org)</comment>


Ask HN: Are you a digital maker, indie "hacker", indie developer? - <AUTHOR> Hi,
I'd like to learn more about the maker, indie hacker community so I created a survey.
If you are a maker yourself, could you please, help me with your answers?
It takes about 15 minutes. Most of the questions have predefined answers, so you only need to select one of them.
https://themakerreport.com/
It'd make me extra happy if you'd share what other questions would you ask from fellow makers, indie hackers.
Thank you. <comment><USER2> wow what a terrible survey. This is just geared to building a web product.

What about cyber security, gaming, embedded. It keeps talking about revenue (I'm not interested in generating revenue) and finding customers (I'm not interested in finding customers)

I clicked "other" on almost every answer, and then got fed up by page 9 and quit

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm sorry about that. You almost made it to the end though :) So thank you for the effort.

Could you help me with what other options to add this question to cover the topics you mentioned? "What kind of products are you making?"

About the revenue. You are right, I have to add an option for those who are not focusing on making any revenue.

<comment><USER3> Not just revenue, but 'products'. Maker, to me, means someone who makes projects, not necessarily things for other people to consume.

<comment><AUTHOR> In this case, I probably choose a bad name for the report. What name would better describe the community of people who are creating tools/products and also trying to make a living from it? I call those people makers as well, but I agree that this could be misleading.

<comment><USER3> I'd say maybe indie developers.

'Maker', to me, means the culture that started with O'Reilly's Make magazine, Maker Faires, and the subsequent culture that grew around it, which concentrated mainly on making physical things, rather than software.

<comment><USER4> I'd say all the terms are wrong: you've covered maker, hacker also has nothing to do with this, as well as indie, which means being alternative, outside the mainstream. I believe you're looking for "Independent Developer"

<comment><AUTHOR> I changed the title of my post to try to make it a bit more clear who the target audience is.

I agree that the real meaning of the word "hacker" has almost nothing to do with independent software or digital product development, but my experience is that many people started to use it to identify those who are using their knowledge to "hack" together digital stuff. Not to mention hackathons where everyone is a "hacker".

Probably there should be more series like Mr. Robot so people would get a better picture of what real hackers are doing :D</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A post-mortem on my first AngularJS project - <AUTHOR> http://johnmunsch.com/2013/09/22/a-post-mortem-on-my-first-angularjs-project/ If you're tired of To-Do lists and Twitter feed examples for AngularJS I can offer a variation. This is a project I did for a t-shirt site and it does quotes using a variety of variables in real time as the user interacts with the UI. I also show how I went back to the existing project to learn how to add unit testing with Karma and Jasmine and a unit testing coverage report with Istanbul. Spoiler: It was pretty easy. <comment><USER2> Post mortem means that your project is dead...

<comment><USER3> Only if you didn't understand conventional use of the term. Since no one really speaks Latin anymore, the conventional use of the term is all that matters.

If a speaker uses a term and the audience understands it, whipping out your Latin dictionary is pointlessly pedantic.

<comment><USER4> I think your anti-pedanticism is excessively pedantic.

Conventional use of the term _does_ indicate an analysis of events after something has come to an end - if not necessarily death. A company, a project, an incident response.

I'm with GP on this one. Based on the title, I thought that the project had in some way come to completion and this was an after-the-fact analysis of cause, effect, and resulting behaviors.

As you said, the conventional use is what matters - and the author here has used the term in a non-conventional sense.

Edit: another read through after seeing the author's comment below. The project did, in fact, come to an end - though that wasn't really clear. Given the content I think the "retrospective" is a better fit. The author used this in the content of the entry itself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice writeup, I especially appreciate the focus on testing. End product looks really slick. You might want to add a screenshot and a link to the blog post in the GitHub repo that you posted.

One thing that I think could be improved is the layout of your code. Right now you have a single controller that handles everything. For example, selecting a shirt color should be a directive, and so should the quantity picker. Then use the $scope.$emit and $scope.$on to hook events together. This way, if I make a better color picker (although yours is pretty stylish), I can swap out yours for mine so long as I emit the same events as yours.

This would also make it easier to add new directives - for example, maybe I could choose a decal on the front and back of shirts, or jersey numbers or something. So I think that the controllers in this case should be pretty minimal, and just provide a scope to tie the various directives together.

Anyway, just a thought. Thanks for sharing this and the included GitHub repo.

<comment><AUTHOR> You bring up two really good points there. I will add a screenshot to the Github repo and there is an opportunity to use a directive for the color picker.

I'm not sure about the quantity picker though, what's that going to look like in the HTML? One element in the code gives you all of the quantity fields?

My use of directives to date has been rather limited so I look forward to exploring that more in some upcoming work.

<comment><USER5> I'm certainly no Angular expert, so take my advice with a healthy amount of skepticism, but I think that it would be one element. The idea being that if I want to swap that stuff out for a new and improved quantity picker, I just change the directive. The idea of angular is that the HTML is supposed to make it clear what's going on, so a single element isn't a bad thing - it says, "here's the part that chooses quantities." Remember that you can nest directives too - so the meat of your page could look like:

      <div ng-controller="QuoteCtrl">
        <shirt-chooser></shirt-chooser>
        <color-picker></color-picker>
        <size-picker>
           <size-picker-choice label="SM"></size-picker-choice>
           <size-picker-choice label="MD"></size-picker-choice>
           <size-picker-choice label="LG"></size-picker-choice>
           <size-picker-choice label="XL"></size-picker-choice>
        </size-picker>
        <number-picker></number-picker>
        <order-summary></order-summary>
      </div>

And then your directive figures out what that means in terms of rendering. But now, the nice thing is that I can just substitute that with <my-size-picker> and, assuming I fulfill the contract, everything should continue to work.

Now you get the added benefit that you can test directives individually, as well as the whole controller. Right now, if you do some restructuring of the page, you could end up in a situation where you break all of your test cases. I mean, in this case it might be overkill, but as a general principle I think it's the right approach.

Anyway, looking forward to see what you do next!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was hoping this would cover:

1\. Angular.js vs Backbone.js from experience of their differences

2\. Angular.js with Require.js (I already know about Backbone.js AMD architecture)

Has anyone done a large project in both Backbone.js and Angular.js?

<comment><AUTHOR> I have done a large Backbone.js project for my last employer. I was on that for about 18 months. I have not done a project with both Backbone.js and AngularJS in the same project. I know some people do that but I truly cannot think of anything Backbone.js brings to that party.

As for Backbone.js by itself... It's OK, I liked it but we had a large project with as many has half a dozen people working on it at its peak and the problem we got into was all of the huge gaps in Backbone.js that you typically fill with other software (two-way binding, validation, templating, AMD, etc.) and if you don't figure out your solutions for all of those gaps before you start every developer in the group ends up filling it his or her own way. Especially if you're under a time crunch and writing really fast.

We ended up with a working project at the end and it was way faster than their old solution but it was a chimera. Every part of it appeared to be a different animal. With AngularJS a lot more of those parts are part of the framework itself and there's less room for that kind of problem. I'm using it for large project work now and liking it a great deal more.

<comment><USER7> This is a really helpful answer for n00bs like myself. Often the differences between technologies emerge not at 'hello world' or 'to do', but in larger projects or working with teams. It's very hard for someone like myself to see those differences for ourselves, at least not until we've been through it a couple of times. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Where did you get those sticker on your laptop?

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://www.redbubble.com](http://www.redbubble.com)

I still want Chrome, Firefox, and MongoDB stickers too. Feel free to send me some :)</comment></comment>


Night Hacking (the productivity boost of 2 am) - <AUTHOR> http://codeclimber.blogspot.com/2008/04/burning-midnight-oil.html <comment><USER2> In the daytime, you're supposed to work, whether you're in the flow or not. At night, if you're coding, it's because you're in the flow. So the phenomenom is explained by a biased sample.

Order people to work at 2 am and see what remains of this productivity boost.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've noticed the night effect for a long time too, and while the lack of interruptions might have something to do with it, I don't think it nearly explains my 3x boost in productivity.

I think there's something biological going on as well. Around 1 or 2 am, I sometimes get a bang of energy and creativity that I never get during the day. It's the "second wind," the injection (possibly) of cortisol and other stress hormones that cause my body to go into stress-protection mode. I become hypervigilant, which causes fewer bugs. I think more quickly, writing code faster and coming up with amazing design ideas instantly.

If you think about this from an evolutionary perspective, it makes perfect sense-- in the animal world, when you become stressed (i.e., a tiger comes up behind you, or you get exhausted looking for food) the outcome is binary: either you die or you live. So the body does extraordinary things to keep you alive, like make you temporarily smarter and more focused.

Over hundreds of thousands of years, perhaps, the body has developed in such a way that the lack of sleep for some number of hours (for me, almost exactly sixteen or seventeen hours) triggers the release of stress hormones which sacrifice the body's current state for mental and physical agility.

When will someone figure out how to hack my brain to make it like that all the time, without the nasty side effects (sleep deprivation) the next day?

More info:

<http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/502825>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cortisol>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norepinephrine>

I should do more research on this.

<comment><USER4> Sleep is cyclic; it comes in phases of varying depth. (<http://www.helpguide.org/life/sleeping.htm>) I find the difference between seven and a half hours of sleep and six hours isn't bad, but the difference between six hours of sleep and four hours of sleep is much more difficult to deal with. Looking at the diagram on the linked page, it's obvious why: sleep stages three and four are important and if you sleep less than six hours they get screwed up. More REM sleep gets messed up too, which is also important.

Day-to-day energy levels are cyclic too. Every day I want to take a nap at 3:00 in the afternoon. I'm also most energized from around 10:00 to 11:00 in the morning. It's a pattern.

A boost of energy at a certain time at night happens likely for the same reason it does during the day: levels of consciousness are cyclic.

As far as nighttime being more productive: there are fewer interruptions which means you can concentrate. It's easier when your cell phone/RSS/Twitter/blog/text/email isn't blowing up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've come up with my best ideas at 2am but I've learned from experience that's the worst time to try implementing them.

In the wee hours typos, syntax errors and simple transposition bugs seem to abound and those take an annoying amount of time to track down and fix. Best to just write the plan out in detail and leave the implementation until morning, unless you want to peck at the keyboard for much longer than you would have when awake.

<comment><USER6> I start to have problems implementing ideas at night as well, but that only starts happening around 5am. On the other hand I'm pretty useless for at least 2 hours after I wake up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think this is because your inner voice is doing this at late night:

"Dude, what the hell are you doing at this ungodly hour?"

"I am trying to get _____ done"

"Oh okay"

So, you are continuously conscious and aware. Naturally you are more productive. I create the same phenomenon during the day too by using a simple tool that I wrote for this exact reason: Smacklet <http://www.smacklet.com>

( shameless plug, but I mean it )

</comment><comment><USER8> An significant factor might also be that when you are tired, you want to get the job done quickly and you spend less time thinking about the options and more time just going ahead.

<comment><USER9> There are times I need to get a lot of boring stuff done and I can just power through that in a night session. I find I can just run through mindless work at a really fast pace when I am tired and not thinking about it too much, or thinking about all the other exciting things I could be doing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Funny, this has never worked or made much sense for me. I have always been able to kick butt from 6 a.m. until as late as midnight, but after that, forget it.

Then when I read the author's reasons for being so productive at night, I realized that you can do all of that during the day. I never IM, text, or RSS, only a few people have my cell phone #, I only check email (and hacker news) every hour or two, and the door is closed. Works great.

Whatever works for you, do it.

<comment><USER11> I've always _felt_ that I was superbly productive at night, but when I measured how much I actually got done, I was working 3-4 times more slowly than I do in the morning or just before dinner. Sleep deprivation does weird things to your perception of time; it's easy to think that you've been busily coding away, only to find that you've written about 2 functions and it's 4 hours later. So without hard data, I'm a little skeptical.

I do find that having nobody around me is a huge boon to productivity, enough that it can sometimes offset the nighttime effect. It's not just the lack of interruptions: I've found that the mere _presence_ of people makes me concentrate on the work less, whether they're talking/IMing me or not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Coding at night is good. But I noticed another thing: texts written at night suck. In the morning you will inevitably be ashamed of what you wrote. The best time for blogging or writing emails is the beginning of the day. I wonder if it's the same for other people, and why this is.

<comment><USER13> Oh that is so true. I avoid writing emails, blog posts, or anything public at night.

The upshot is code docs don't get written during a night-time hacking session.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Since I work for myself (from home), no one sees when I work. So I code at night when they're not calling and emailing. I often just stick to communication and getting menial stuff done during the day. Sometimes people start to notice though, and some people I work with don't bother calling me until the afternoon, in case I sleep in a bit late after a solid night of coding...

On the one hand it might look less professional in some peoples eyes, but in others they think it means I must be some kind of super hacker. Either way, it's amusing for me :)

</comment><comment><USER15> Thyroid-stimulating hormone,among others, are released prior to sleep. The thyroid controls how quickly the body burns energy, makes proteins, and how sensitive the body should be to other hormones. So it may be that you get a burst of energy just prior to sleep(to make you feel tired enough for a good night sleep).

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thyroid_gland>

</comment><comment><USER16> Working at night is great. Trouble is, you pay the price the next day when you're downing coffees just to keep from falling asleep on your keyboard.

I'm guessing at least some here have made that trip out to the parking garage around lunchtime while simultaneously setting their cellphone alarm for +20 minutes for just a quick nap. Extra points if you keep a blanket in the back seat. :)

</comment><comment><USER17> Night-time is best for my writing but worst for my coding - go figure. If I have a big backlog of emails, or I'm trying to write a journal paper, I don't even bother trying during the day anymore, unless there's a deadline.

</comment><comment><USER18> Long flights work well too, if you can find a way to ignore the in-flight service. You're just stuck. Might as well do something...

</comment><comment><USER19> Wow, there's other people _like_ me? Who _don't_ think I'm crazy for working in the middle of the night?

</comment><comment><USER20> So true, too bad you can't work like that every night.</comment>


How Archerfish Hunt With Their Spit (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2013/11/archerfish-physics/

<comment><USER2> The archerfish in the Baltimore aquarium hunt cooperatively. The fish that takes the shot is not the fish that gets the cricket. Advanced physics and society. Not bad for a tiny fish.</comment>


Bottle light inventor proud to be poor - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23536914 <comment><USER2> This isn't an alternative to the light bulb. This is an alternative to the window for people living in slums that can't afford glass.

<comment><USER3> Probably you've never seen a slum, so let me explain:

\- Houses are juxtaposed to each other, there's no room for windows

\- Roofs are corrugated, so you can't easily fit a top glass panel even if you have the money for one.

\- There are transparent, fiber glass roofs, and some people use those, but often they don't get to choose the materials used to build the house, just use what is available.

So this is a quite nice hack that works for most houses.

<comment><USER4> All those sound plausible (having never been to a favela), and if true I agree with you on almost all counts.

But it's still not a substitute for a light bulb unless it works in the dark.

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure that's fair. It is bulb shape and it emits light. The source of the light happens to be the sun. This is kind of like saying that tungsten lamps aren't lightbulbs because they don't work when not supplied with electricity. They're truly acting as a substitute by spreading light around a darkened area.

<comment><USER6> We're just arguing semantics here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The title of this article bothers me since the article focuses much more on the bottle and light and rather than how poor and proud Alfredo Moser is. Regardless, pretty cool exposure of life in the slums, I'd bet there are more 'hacks' as a means of survival that are necessary there, but we wouldn't think twice about.

I will say the article is good, just don't like the title.

<comment><USER8> I can understand being proud of a beneficial invention and offering something to people without taking money for it. He's done an amazing good deed and hopefully will be remembered for this. But I don't understand the title of the article because I think taking pride in poverty is a weird position to be taking. The headline might just be catchy click bait.

<comment><USER9> Proud to be poor?

Not paying taxes into NSA surveillance/military state or any whatever exploitive capitalism as other collared proles. Some people are far too busy than to concern themselves with financial vanity and the distractions that follow it.

Teeming masses of slum youth with linux netbooks must be high on the list of Fort Meade's threat matrix.

<comment><USER8> * You can be proud of opposing the NSA and the MIC and other mechanisms of destruction without volunteering for a life of destitution.

* You're free to do whatever you want, but I don't think that embracing poverty is a good solution to the NSA or the MIC. Mass poverty means that the government controls everybody's means of survival (foodstamps, healthcare, etc) which equals total political control. I think that creating business solutions and voluntary organizations that oppose these things is a more viable path, and having money helps with that. Start up a secure email webservice. Startup a charity organization that can help bring relief and attention to innocent civilians being bombed or harmed by governments.

* Your stance on capitalism being exploitative is a logical contradiction. A voluntary transaction can only occur in a market when both sides of a trade value what they are getting more than what they are giving up.

* What we have today as an economic system is not capitalism - governments dictate the winners and losers in the marketplace and those companies with the best lobbyists always win rather than the companies who create the most value for customers.

* You don't need to be a collared prole, to use your terminology. Software is all free and open source now. Start a business with some friends and live an alternative lifestyle to being a 9-5 corporate man. That's what a lot of people here currently do or are working towards.

* Not being poor doesn't automatically equate to financial vanity.

<comment><USER10> Excellent answer!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> True hacker, if I ever saw one.

</comment><comment><USER12> I live off-grid, and have done so for nearly 20 years, and I never needed indoor lighting during daylight hours.

I also dislike the idea of poking holes in my roof, for any reason.

I'm much more intersted in the gravity light which was featured here a few months ago.

[http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/gravitylight-lighting- for-...](http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/gravitylight-lighting-for- developing-countries)

Although the initial cost may be prohibitive for the poverty stricken, it may be well within the acceptable price range for many others, and the gravity light has the added bonus of not requiring any fuel, nor does it require punching holes in one's roof.

(I live in an upland rainforest)

<comment><USER13> Lights are used indoors all day long in much of the world. If you don't like poking holes in your roof, then you probably don't like sun windows either.

The gravity light requires manual labor to produce light, has moving parts that are more likely to fail, is more costly, and produces less light.

<comment><USER14> The gravity light produces a _shamefully_ small amount of power - about 100 mW ("one deciwatt") by the manufacturer's own measurement. Even given the increased efficiency of LEDs, the illumination provided by one of these "bottle lights" is still about 100x greater, it's basically free, and it doesn't require you to tend to it every 15 - 30 minutes.

<comment><USER15> It would, however, work as an addition to bottle lights, to be used at night.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This headline is offensive. Nowhere in the article does he indicate that he is proud to be poor. Not that there would be anything wrong with that — quite the opposite, in fact, however, this headline reeks of elitism.

</comment><comment><USER17> Hmm. This would also be really useful in doing underground greenhouses.

A tin sheet is cheap. You dig a hole, however long, wide, and deep. Then, you can get in the hole and plant whatever in there. Once done, you can cover it up with the sheet (or wood or whatever) and put the bottle-lights inside.

That way, you keep the pests out of your new garden.

<comment><USER18> It does not seem like that would be very practical.

Very few economically important plants will thrive in anything less than full sunlight. This makes sense because most plants become economically important because they are productive (good at turning sunlight into something we want like calories or wood).

The exceptions are plants that are grown for some valuable quality which is only needed in scarce quantities, like some spices or flowers.

<comment><USER19> Yeah, I didn't understand the hydroponics comment at the end. How does it work better to grow plants indoors than outside if you're using a limited amount of sunlight indoors? Are there other factors that make it worth it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Down below, a deck prism illumination is astonishing. Drilling a round hole in the cabin sole is way easier, and a discarded plastic bottle is far less expensive than a vintage Criitenden & Willcox prism. Separate the bleach if you get real thirsty? Watch your head(pun?).

<comment><USER20> Deck prisms: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deck_prism](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deck_prism)

The main difference here is that deck prisms are flat on top, which limits the amount of light entering the prism. The water in the bottles is filled to the top, creating a dome shaped concentrator. Since water has a refractive index close to glass (~1.3 vs ~1.5) the bottom of the bottle has a similar effect to the deck prism, except with slightly more light.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is effectively a lightbulb that uses wireless energy.

</comment><comment><USER22> Interesting invention. For me, the main thing to learn from this is how much some people depend on artificial light during daylight hours (a reminder of how important hands-on experience is when hacking things to help others).

</comment><comment><USER23> The numbers don't make sense to me. "It depends on how strong the sun is but it's more or less 40 to 60 watts." <\- I hope that's for the whole roof we see in the picture, not for a single bottle. What's the insolation of a single bottle top anyway? (Unless, of course, they're talking about your grandma's old-fashioned incandescent light bulbs.)

<comment><USER24> Well, at the surface, when the rays are hitting perpendicular to the planet, it's 1000 W/m^2 (approx).

Of course the real problem is they are measuring the light in terms of incandescent bulb power draw, rather than something useful like lumens or candela, but due to a century of ubiquitous light bulbs, we've been rating light in the wrong units.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> "The lamps work best with a black cap..." \- why would that be so? Wouldn't a reflective cap work well too?

<comment><USER26> All I can think of is that a black cap won't degrade as quickly because of ultraviolet exposure. Most plastics (long polymers) have chemical bonds that can be broken by the energy level provided by ultraviolet photons, so over time they turn from polymers into quasicrystals and lose their strength -- disintegrate. But a black plastic, by excluding the ultraviolet light, protects itself and lasts much longer.

So a bottle that's composed of a clear plastic that naturally resists ultraviolet degradation (there are several) should be capped by a more rigid plastic (to maintain its shape). So the cap needs to be black (or at least a dark color).

A reflective cap would work just as well at first, but plastics are made reflective by being painted, and the paint soon falls off, because of ... wait for it ... ultraviolet exposure.

<comment><USER27> I thought black objects absorb all wavelengths, and white objects reflect them all away.

<comment><USER28> Real world materials are rarely ideal black bodies (or ideal reflectors).

<comment><USER26> > Real world materials are rarely ideal black bodies (or ideal reflectors).

That's true, but it's also true that all objects eventually reach thermal equilibrium with their surroundings. Were this not the case, it would violate the law of energy conservation, and that's a law that's never broken.

In that sense, most objects, solids and plasmas in particular, are reasonable black bodies once they achieve equilibrium. Some of them show spectral lines -- emission, absorption or both -- but in most cases those lines appear on top of a blackbody curve. The sun, for example -- perhaps surprisingly, it exhibits a classic blackbody spectrum appropriate to its surface temperature, with many spectral lines contributed primarily by its comparatively low- pressure atmosphere ([http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Solar_Spectrum.png](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Solar_Spectrum.png)).

The state of matter least like a black body is a low-pressure molecular cloud in space, which often shows only emission and absorption lines, no classic blackbody curve. The lowest pressure gases show the narrowest spectral lines, which is how we can estimate the pressure of a remote cloud of gas illuminated by distant energy sources.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> You can't turn off the fucking thing.

<comment><USER30> It automatically turns itself off at night. And then back on again in the morning; and not in with the shocking "argh! my eyes!" suddenness of an incandescent, but a gradual taper that allows your eyes to adjust slowly.

Also, you could use a cup and a rubber-band to cover it if you needed darkness mid-day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I thought of this general idea many years ago, but then decided it might be better to cut up the bottles, flatten the plastic and sew the flat pieces together to make panels to use in roofs and windows. Never got around to actually doing anything about it though.

</comment><comment><USER32> At some point, Heineken shipped mostly-oblong bottles to somewhere in the Dutch West Indies for use in walls. I have the impression--I read this years ago--that it was more or less a hobby of the owner. Still, it worked.

</comment><comment><USER33> My dad built a treehouse with exactly this with liter water bottles in ~1994, he said he saw it when he was growing up with glass bottles. I hate to be a spoil sport, but this is hardly a new idea.

<comment><USER34> I've this guy on TV a long time ago. I'm certain it was at the 90's, but I don't remember the exact year.

It's not a new idea in any way, and was certainly invented more than once. Yet, it was this guy that (by luck) made the life of several people better by communicating it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> The comparison with edison is just ridiculous.

</comment><comment><USER36> Daft title and poverty or wealth are morally neutral. You could be equally proud of either.

</comment><comment><USER37> That's such an obvious solution I can't believe nobody thought of that before this guy.

Weird.

</comment><comment><USER38> Being very petulant here, but Uberaba is in the southwest, not in the south.

</comment><comment><USER39> I spent a bit over a year promoting and installing these devices in rural West Africa (see [http://gamlight.org](http://gamlight.org)). I actually wasn't aware of Mr. Moser, having taken inspiration directly from the Liter of Light project ([http://literoflight.org](http://literoflight.org)).

In terms of light, a single bottle is insufficient, but ten are enough to light up a mud block-walled, corrugate metal-roofed schoolroom. Since there's virtually zero monitoring of kids' eye health and ability, that can mean the difference between learning to read and learning to look like you're paying attention for young students.

A few things to address:

Night: these things don't produce any light on their own (they're essentially low-cost deck prisms). A lot of people in-country at the time I helped promote these were excited at the possibility that a full moon might produce sufficient light to see, but it's just not enough. You need to supplement these things once the sun's down.

Windows: most of the buildings in rural West Africa are build of mud block, which isn't the most stable or solid of construction materials. It's cheap and readily available, but needs to be built thick and without large windows, or with significant reinforcement to any large windows, or else it crumbles. That means there's very little light coming into these rooms, even in the most sun- kissed of places. Bottle bulbs are an order of magnitude cheaper than installing iron-reinforced windows.

Transparent/translucent roofing: when this stuff is available at all, it's questionable whether it will fit the corrugate pattern of an extant roof, and the quality of the translucent roofing plastics we saw in The Gambia and Senegal was quite low; it would go milky and then opaque over just a year or two, and cost more than replacing a bottle bulb would. By contrast, you can purchase corrugated tin roofing and roofing caulk in just about any West African city, and relatively affordably at that. The bottles themselves can be found cheaply or free anywhere that tourists or aid workers spend time.

Black caps: it's not the color that matters, it's covering the original cap with something more durable. Once you've assured that there's no leaks in the bottle-corrugate metal interface, the cap is the most likely point of failure on these bulbs. The sun is STRONG in these places, which is a lot of stress on opaque plastics; once weakened, a small crack is enough to emit water vapor, and so a bottle bulb's contents would evaporate, requiring replacement.

The real tricks involved are getting a good seal between the bottle and the corrugate tin (we used roof caulking), and making the whole process relatively efficient (it can take a while to punch these out). Once you've got that down, the production and installation process can be taught to locals, who in turn can turn a profit with their labors. I worked with one carpenter for about a year before returning to the states, and he's since picked up a few contracts with the local ministry of education and a few individual customers to install bottle lighting systems.

I would be happy to go on about these things for HOURS (and have, in the past)! They're a niche solution, but they fit their niche _extremely_ well.

</comment><comment><USER40> goog one

</comment><comment><USER41> The problem with the article is that they're obfuscating the fact that this does not produce light. It's basically a smarter way to poke a hole through your ceiling. It's not a device that converts energy into light.

<comment><USER42> Rather odd thing to say. How it works is explained in the second paragraph after the intro :

"So how does it work? Simple refraction of sunlight, explains Moser, as he fills an empty two-litre plastic bottle."

I agree that it does involve poking a hole through the ceiling, but the thing's simplicity belies its utility and what may seem "obvious" after the fact doesn't make it any less significant an invention.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_of_Columbus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_of_Columbus)

<comment><USER41> I saw that sentence with the word "refraction" and I wasn't sure if it was the whole idea or if refraction was just one part of a clever design to enhance the effects of another artificial light source.

That's why I felt it was misleading. Looking at the article again, though, it's probably clearer than I originally thought it was.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Or you could just open a window.

<comment><USER44> I think you're not really understanding the kind of housing this is made for. Shacks in slums don't generally have nice triple glassed windows.

<comment><USER28> Yes, the alternative would be going outdoors. But in the tropics you don't want to do that during the midday sun.

<comment><USER45> No, people absolutely take the hot sun all the time when they have to go out, they need it because their homes are dark even in the day and there's stuff you want to do inside the house in the day, like cooking, cleaning, studying...

<comment><USER28> Yes, you have to be outside, but you wouldn't want to be, if you can avoid it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Did someone told him about « windows » ?

<comment><USER44> Wow, I didn't think there'd be _two_ comments saying this. This is about slums in Brazil and the Philippines, you should look up the conditions of the housing the people there live in. This is pretty high on the disconnection from reality scale.</comment></comment>


Spck mobile editor looking for beta testers - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.spck <comment><AUTHOR> Hi hackers, I am the author of a brand new editor that works on phones and browsers. I made this app because I really enjoy coding but can't be glued to my computer at home all day during school and commutes. I have Github integration in the app so you can make github commits to your projects on the go. I didn't really want a makeshift solution where I need to upload code to a shared drive or download a zip file whenever I make progress, and I couldn't find anything out there that was free. The app works offline and stores your data in a local indexedDB database so you don't have to worry about leaking confidential code to the public. I hope to get some beta testers and feedback and create a useful tool for all to code with~ Have a nice day everyone, happy hacking!</comment>


Evite: your data for sale - <AUTHOR> http://www.oracle.com/webfolder/assets/cloud-data-directory/index.html#/page/59

<comment><USER2> Misleading title - this document lists data for sale from dozens of businesses, not just Evite. (Which actually makes it much more interesting than the title implies.)</comment>


Patagonia joins growing list of companies boycotting Facebook ads - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/22/patagonia-joins-growing-list-of-companies-boycotting-facebook-ads.html <comment><USER2> I respect the hell out of Patagonia and always have. I could go on and on about things they do that are capital-C Correct. This is obviously the right move.

They're a very rare company in terms of being bullheaded about their principles: for sure, something they maintain from their founder.

I'd love to own stock in them but i'm happier to have them stay private and not beholden to anyone else's interests.

<comment><USER3> But we don't know how much of their revenue is driven by FB ads. Its possible that its not that significant.

revenue gain from publicity + brand strengthening > loss of revenue

Their future customers aren't red state ppl.

Its possible that they are using this formula. I don't get all the blind praise and "respect" from people who have no idea what equations were used to get to this decision.

They should outline what sacrifices they are making otherwise i take this as a 'publicity stunt' . This stunt is particularly absurd given they have no problem making stuff in china.

Ppl blindly supporting this are politically motivated, obviously.

[https://www.patagonia.com/static/on/demandware.static/-/Libr...](https://www.patagonia.com/static/on/demandware.static/-/Library- Sites-PatagoniaShared/default/dw29ab8345/PDF-US/Made_in_China_EN.pdf)

> Far more of our products are made by those Chinese suppliers than they are > by the U.S factories because of their expertise and price

> We've made the choice not to disengage from countries on the basis of their > policies.

Hilarious.

Yet another hypocritical company jumping on the bandwagon.

<comment><USER4> You could say that about any company doing good. "But we don't know how much of this is politically motivated". For example, they run ad campaigns for voting/saving public lands.

Yes, they are spending their profits on it. And people like companies that do good things, so i'm sure it earns them some trust & brand loyalty. Does that mean it's ill intended?

<comment><USER3> > they run ad campaigns for voting/saving public lands.

This is part of their brand building. Ppl buying their overpriced jackets are not just buying a jacket they are buying "good feelings". They cannot justify the price just on just the quality of the jacket, they have to bundle intangible in their price. Outdoorsy ppl want they outdoors saved, its a no brainer for outdoor company to support this.

Their customers dont' give a shit about muslims in Chinese camps so they don't "run ad campaigns for saving muslims".

Why are you attributing some noble intentions behind basic 101 business marketing. Its clearly not the case per what i said above.

> Does that mean it's ill intended?

yes. I call BS.

<comment><USER5> I feel like its a weird stance to say that Patagonia jackets are overpriced and only justify their value due to their political opinions. Like they're some of the best $/quality on the market and they have great resale value. They turned up on my shortlist before I knew anything about their environmental/political stances.

I think people en masse are more price sensitive and lifestyle oriented than they are activist-by-proxy.

<comment><USER6> Agreed.

Patagonia also has an Ironclad Guarantee [1] - "If you are not satisfied with one of our products at the time you receive it, or if one of our products does not perform to your satisfaction, return it to the store you bought it from or to Patagonia for a repair, replacement or refund."

They stand by their products. You can even return more than a year later and get credit. Some buy stuff on resale and get it repaired or exchanged for new for cheap.

[1] [https://help.patagonia.com/s/article/Ironclad- Guarantee](https://help.patagonia.com/s/article/Ironclad-Guarantee)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As a consumer, I have lost all confidence in facebook adverts. I see no shortage of scams with no real way to report them as a scam. One example was a series of adverts for a bike computer / light / alarm that was launched on kickstarter that I backed. I saw repeated adverts from various companies reporting to sell these devices for $15 to $20. I checked with the actual company who confirmed they were not real. Every time I blocked / reported the advert a few weeks later the same advice would reappear but a different seller.

Often adverts show you a great product sold for a third of what should be charged. If you buy they send you something worth a fraction of what you paid. If you pay they ask you to send it back for a full refund or they might offer to return some of the money. You need to pay for the return though. Facebook have these scams all over the place. I have lost all trust in the platform!

</comment><comment><USER8> They also wont let banks or oil companies purchase co-branded clothing...

[https://boingboing.net/2019/04/02/fintech-bros-not- welcome.h...](https://boingboing.net/2019/04/02/fintech-bros-not-welcome.html)

IMO the whole refusing service is weird, not giving out advertisement dollars to specific companies make sense though.

<comment><USER9> An oil company ordering Patagonia would be delicious irony, but why banks? Are banks known for serious damage to their environment? Genuine question.

<comment><USER10> The FratBro culture at a lot of the financial sector was using the Patagonia vests as part of their "dress code". Patagonia decided they did not want to be associated with that culture.

<comment><USER11> Exactly this, Patagonia did not want to be supportive of a certain business culture.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I applaud Patagonia for being principled and for standing for something.

I deeply question justifying the decision based on this list of wrongs facebook did:

[https://www.stophateforprofit.org/#comp- kba0i6jc](https://www.stophateforprofit.org/#comp-kba0i6jc)

This is not very convincing. It's very emotional and I couldn't find a single source, or link, or evidence of these any of these claims on that website. It's basically one large corporation not really known for its ethics (the ADL) saying "side with us!" and telling you to hate the other large, faceless corporation not known for its ethics.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is doing the right thing for the wrong reasons.

I haven't used Facebook for years, because their entire platform is based on collecting data and manipulating users to sell ads. They sell the collected data even when it's a gross violation of users' privacy, and manipulate even when it causes depression, addiction, fear, and anger. I absolutely support boycotting Facebook and in fact all social media[1].

But like it or not, Facebook has become a communications platform for a huge portion of our population, and as such, they have a responsibility to protect the free speech of their users. Starting off as a communications platform and then turning into a censored platform at this point would be a bait and switch, and a serious step toward totalitarianism.

Totalitarianism enforced by corporations isn't better than totalitarianism enforced by government. Free speech is an inalienable human right, and doesn't disappear because you've (foolishly) put a corporation in charge.

And while I do agree that totalitarianism enforced on behalf of good ideas like anti-racism is better than totalitarianism enforced on behalf of bad ideas is better, once we decide to give totalitarian power to corporations, there's no going back. I don't trust corporations with that power--Facebook has already shown that they cannot be trusted with this power when they censored Palestinian journalists in Israel, and cooperated with totalitarian regimes during the Arab spring to censor pro-democracy content. History has shown us over and over again that totalitarianism in the name of noble ideals always becomes corrupt.

[1] I'm notably a hypocrite with regards to Reddit. But just because I'm a hypocrite doesn't mean I'm wrong.

</comment><comment><USER14> Increasingly, I'm bothered by corporate activism. Now, it's not merely a transactional exchange of value, but one of ideological posturing. I prefer business to be transactional, because it's honest and straightforward. Everything else is a facade. This company doesn't care about me. Google, for example, doesn't care about "not being evil". They just want dominance and money. They were supposed to be the anti-Microsoft and now, like the pigs in Animal Farm, I can't tell the difference between them and the humans. Same goes for all the other tech monopolies.

<comment><USER15> > I prefer business to be transactional, because it's honest and > straightforward

No corporation or politicians will ever be "transactional" because that just doesn't sell. You just can't make branding or marketing without posturing.

And for a fashion corporation (e.g.: Patagonia) posturing is even more essential. They don't sell clothes, they sell posturing.

Deal with it: everybody is always acting, even you.

<comment><USER14> Plenty of corporations are transactional. You just don't hear about them, they don't get PR points for being transactional. They just hum along and work quietly in the background and we often rely on their services and products.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I much prefer Facebook's relatively laissez faire approach instead of Twitter's politically biased approach where hateful things are allowed as long as they are from the left side of the political spectrum.

Drawing the line on what is hate speech is a hard enough problem already, and companies like Google, Twitter don't even try to be impartial, their execs have clearly taken a side. Add to that the weird times we're living in and how people's fundamental moral ideas have diverted so much in the last 10 years, and you have a perfect disaster.

Facebook's approach is less harmful than the alternative right now.

<comment><USER17> > where hateful things are allowed as long as they are from the left side of > the political spectrum

Citation needed.

It's not because you hear more often in the media about the right being censored that it means that hateful stuff from the left is allowed.

<comment><USER18> Need a citation? Get on twitter and see how right wingers get banned on heated discussions with left wingers where BOTH are aggressive to each other.

The left also mass report stuff they don't like as "hate speech" which automatically results in a ban.

Sorry, but the hate speech stuff is just a new way to censor stuff some people don't like and in the end it'll affect us all, no matter if left or right wing.

<comment><USER17> That's doesn't provide any evidence. Twitter doesn't block tweets for being "agressive", they block tweets for some very specific things like call to violence etc.

* Can you show that one side gets censored more often than the other? Not just based on your biased personal timeline.

* If yes, can you show that both sides breaks the ToS as often? Both sides are politically very different, and appeal to very different people, it's not hard to imagine that one side may indeed be more violent than the other.

So yes, I would like a citation.

<comment><USER19> Alright since you asked for citation here is one: [https://www.opindia.com/2019/04/popular-twitter-account- true...](https://www.opindia.com/2019/04/popular-twitter-account-trueindology- suspended-again-after-suspended-bureaucrat-threatened-to-use-his-contacts-to- block-it/)

This is a really popular right wing Twitter account in India which only dealt with exposing false narratives spread by leftist historians with facts. Facts from published books, memoirs of Kings who ruled India, sculptures and ancient artifacts. "True Indology" did not break any rules. Was not violent nor did he threaten anyone. Just exposing false narratives through facts. He was banned with no reason provided. This was not the first time his account was suspended. It was done multiple times. You can read complete details of what he experienced on Twitter here: [https://www.mynation.com/views/true-indology- exposes-the-vic...](https://www.mynation.com/views/true-indology-exposes-the- vicious-plan--pqtqwo)

The number of right wing accounts shadow banned and suspended in India by Twitter is staggering. You never hear left wing accounts being suspended. No matter how much hate speech you come across. Heck those left wing accounts that get exposed for hate speech automatically turn their accounts private. That doesn't mean that Twitter doesn't know what is contained within the account right? It can still close down the account for violation of its policies. But it doesn't do that. There is a strong undercurrent against left- leaning biased social media sites like Twitter in India. It will just erupt one day just like Indians have erupted against TikTok. It is only a matter of time. Twitter is doing a big mistake by treating right wingers in India unfairly.

<comment><USER20> OpIndia is a propaganda website.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpIndia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpIndia)

<comment><USER19> More Golden quotes from the Co-Founder of Wikipedia:

"It is time for Wikipedia to come clean and admit that it has abandoned NPOV (i.e., neutrality as a policy). At the very least they should admit that that they have redefined the term in a way that makes it utterly incompatible with its original notion of neutrality, which is the ordinary and common one.4 It might be better to embrace a "credibility" policy and admit that their notion of what is credible does, in fact, bias them against conservatism, traditional religiosity, and minority perspectives on science and medicine—to say nothing of many other topics on which Wikipedia has biases.

Of course, Wikipedians are unlikely to make any such change; they live in a fantasy world of their own making.5"

So much for neutrality!

Source: [https://larrysanger.org/2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly- biased/](https://larrysanger.org/2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/)

<comment><USER21> But honestly, without 'bias' unmoderated public forums (fora?) become flooded with 'minority perspectives' e.g. nonsense and conspiracy theories.

<comment><USER19> Then don't say that there is no bias. It insults our intelligence when you on the one hand stand for freedom of speech, take grandstanding that there is no bias whatsoever and when it is inconvenient for you say that bias exists and is needed and go ahead to justify it! This isn't freedom of speech by any means. Moderation cannot be denial of freedoms. Moderation can only be with regards to things that are universal. Like not being violent. That applies to both left and right wing. But even there, left-wing social media sites fail miserably. They suspend ring-wing accounts that are abusive (which I am all for) but they don't suspend left-wing accounts that are abusive. Why this double standards?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Boycotting Facebook ads for a month and a half. Then they'll be back at it.

[https://twitter.com/patagonia/status/1274832569398292480](https://twitter.com/patagonia/status/1274832569398292480)

<comment><USER23> "through at least the end of July"

 _at least_

As in, they're starting here, and they'll continue if they don't see action.

Patagonia is privately held and they seem like an organization that would follow principals over profits, in general.

This is a clearer message to Facebook than an outright loss. Facebook now has to say "We lost this month, are we willing to lose next month? And the month after?" as opposed to "Well, we lost the revenue, no use crying over spilled milk".

<comment><USER22> Patagonia gets the PR bump today for axing Facebook advertising. If they resume in a month, without FB changing its ways, they get to walk to walk without talking the talk. By giving Patagonia a huge amount of free coverage, it's on them to actually maintain their values until FB changes-- and we have no means of holding them accountable to this.

<comment><USER23> OK, but to link the tweet, say "It's only July", and not mention that they state they'll continue to do so is disingenuous.

<comment><USER24> A better statement would be "until Facebook does X" instead of "at least until deadline". Clever use of language is not lost on their marketing/PR/legal teams

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Are there any people trading on companies trading their profitability for moral righteousness? Many companies are doing poorly now anyways, but I wonder if it is actually possible to convert these types of actions into gains.

<comment><USER26> Not a chance. To Wall Street, social justice, "good morals" and ethics are not profitable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I find it scary that so many companies are asserting their political will so aggressively. I don't think this will end well.

<comment><USER28> Can you elaborate on that? What about this story is scary to you?

<comment><USER29> Facebook has made a point that they'd rather not build a world where Mark Zuckerberg's schmucks decide who can express their opinions and who can't. Patagonia is targeting Facebook not because Facebook is full of hate, but for failing to censor things they deem hateful.

Patagonia's stance against hate some merit to it, but it is in the end an illiberal stance, one which fails to acknowledge the concept that freedom of speech may be a broadly good thing. As society becomes more illiberal, the list of "hate" will grow broader and the list of approved politicians and causes will grow narrower. I am sure that there are a few on these pages who would be ever so thrilled to ban the entire Republican party from advertising entirely.

We have had similar episodes in this nation's history. The Red Scare comes to mind. The House Unamerican Activities committee set out to find the Communists and Russian agents who were infiltrating government and society at all levels. And there were, in truth, a lot of Russian agents who had infiltrated American government. And yet today we mostly do not talk about that, for instead, we must talk about how the HUAC, its blacklists which would ban people from industry, was a deranged exercise in paranoia, guilt-by-loose-association, and its own forms of hatred.

Today's cancel culture, in which Patagona's boycott is but the smallest plank, is the new HUAC. It differs in that it is not run by government and it is generally leaderless. It is the same in that there are a lot of things which are legitimately problems, and it finds some of them. It is the same in that it deploys abusive media and social-media attention on small-time nobodies, destroying their careers and their livelihoods, in an effort to create an atmosphere of fear and silence its opposition. And I can only hope that future generations will look back on us aghast and ask, "what the hell was wrong with these people?"

<comment><USER30> > one which fails to acknowledge the concept that freedom of speech may be a > broadly good thing.

How does Patagonia's stance do anything to freedom of speech? I don't follow your post after this assertion.

Is Patagonia not exercising its rights directly? Are you suggesting that a more-free-speech approach would be having the government force you to sell your products directly to people you don't want to?

I'm confused how you connected Patagonia's actions to free speech. They are standing up for free speech and free actions, if anything, and it sounds like you're suggesting that they are against free speech with this move.

But free speech is the very idea that supports and protects this move.

<comment><USER29> Patagonia's actions are 100% within their rights. Patagonia's actions are 100% about exercising their rights, as you say. Both Facebook and Patagonia are entitled by the First Amendment, as reiterated by _Citizens United_ , to exercise the freedom of speech directly, on behalf of their owners or shareholders. There is no First Amendment violation of any sort.

Nevertheless, the thing that Patagonia are exercising their rights to do is a call for censorship. The point of the boycott is to pressure Facebook to censor users' content, with the aims of preventing certain viewpoints from being expressed. These viewpoints are likely noxious.

This is a call for censorship in practice. This exercise in free speech seeks to undermine the exercise of free speech. This movement is a call to reduce the freedoms which is made available in practice to the people of the world.

I do not believe it will stop here. I believe it will not stop until it is very harmful. I believe someday the fruits of this movement, if successful, will gravely harm the freedoms of expression generally.

I therefore condemn and denounce it (though I will not call for it to be censored.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Yawn... So what happened to the #DeleteFacebook campaign.

With the number of times Facebook has been cancelled, one is still shocked their is anything to boycott.

Haven't been a fan of Zucks but he has earned my respect for being the sane head in the Chaos.

Funny, they are also using Facebook to organize to boycott... That should say something to them

</comment><comment><USER32> They really do make the best clothing I have ever owned, fantastic comfort, practical, good styling and colour palettes.

A great bonus that they also have a strong ethics. My jacket uses down that is certified as being cruelty free, the factories are checked for fair working practices.

</comment><comment><USER33> I don't like Facebook ads, and I wish there was no hateful messages. BUT I hate censorship even more and I think Facebook's approach is better than Twitter's. And personally even if I like Patagonia and North Face (own multiple products of both), I just won't be able to buy their products anymore with a clear conscience because they push censorship. I think it's fine to be a left leaning company, I know North Face and others have support immigration policies, which I'm all for. But trying to force other businesses to shut up is another level.

The beauty of this country is diversity. But if you are applying selective diversity until it fits 100% your views that's not good either.

<comment><USER34> One of my concerns with censorship is that I want to know if people in power are saying these terrible things. When it's simply deleted or hidden, it's like it never happened. I'd much rather it be out there for the world to see.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> What are they asking Facebook to do?

<comment><USER36> It sounds like they're demanding that Facebook censor content and advertisements, as long as it aligns with Patagonia's politics.

And they are using the power of the mob to guilt trip other companies into joining them.

<comment><USER37> If I'm a small business owner and I buy billboard space from a guy (Jimmy) who also sells billboard space to advertisers who publish racist/sexist content, is it unreasonable for me to spend my money elsewhere until Jimmy quits his bs? What if Jimmy freely sends mailers too, to anyone who asks, and I want him to not send mailers if they are racist? If I was in that position and you told me you had a problem with what _I_ was doing, I would tell you to get off my lawn.

<comment><USER36> The underlying topic here is free speech. I'm sure you were on-board with YouTube censoring the "Plandemic" video last month, right? You probably said "YouTube is a private company and they have the right to do whatever they want". Well, Facebook is a private company and they can also "do whatever they want".

But at least Facebook is letting natural market forces play out rather than become a subjective information gatekeeper.

<comment><USER38> How does this affect free speech?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Will they still let Facebook buy co-branded clothing?

</comment><comment><USER36> They're getting an awful lot of free advertising by grandstanding that they won't pay for advertising.

</comment><comment><USER40> ...during July.

Goes to show which of the two companies is actually more powerful.

<comment><USER41> I think you misunderstood their statement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I do t think advertised boycotts will really sway Facebook. At the end of the day, they provide access to a billion users. That is valuable, and companies are going to pay money to advertise to those users.

</comment><comment><USER43> Sitting here in my Patagonia shorts thinking that I will never buy another product from them. If they want to play in politics, they will lose half of their customer base.

<comment><USER44> Having opinions about politics is not exactly new for Patagonia. I mean, they changed their homepage to say THE PRESIDENT STOLE YOUR LAND when Trump shrank Bears Ears.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Meta: what's with the top-level comments in here? A lot of serious tangents, praising or digging at Patagonia's practices, instead of focusing on the subject at hand. Trying to signal moral standing of the party in question, so people can decide how to respond to this action?

</comment><comment><USER46> Where's that picture of obama giving himself a medal when you need it?

</comment><comment><USER47> Given there are a very large amount of nearly identical t-shirts and caps you can buy, a clothing company's sole strategy is marketing. If you think this "boycotting" isn't also marketing, you're a sucker. Stop with all the comments about their "principles". They sell goddamn t-shirts. Manufactured in China btw.

</comment><comment><USER36> Facebook should indefinitely suspend any company who partakes in this from using their platform (advertising, fan pages, groups, etc).

See how much those companies like censorship when it impacts their bottom line.

<comment><USER48> One would have to approach that very carefully without completely spooking your advertising customers. Suspending a company for suspending its marketing spend on your platform would be one hell of a precedence to set.

Enshrining something like a zero tolerance policy for anti-FB activism on the platform would be one avenue to pursue, but that is also threading a fine line.

Shadow banning activists might be a nice intermediary e.g. you can still post to your page but it absolutely will not show up on other people's feeds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Seems like a marketing ploy. Everyone is cutting spending right now due to the economic downturn. What better way to cut spending you were going to cut than turn it into a publicity stunt that translates into likes on Twitter!

Great time to buy outdoor apparel ads on FB, btw.

<comment><USER24> Since they're only stopping for the month of July, I now suspect that you're presumption is correct.

<comment><USER50> Wow what a nothingburger this is, and the press took it hook line and sinker. Amazing PR

<comment><USER51> PR is the whole point, but it's also PR against Facebook. For sure this won't make Facebook cry for the lost of ads dollar, but it's another day in the press where Facebook is being looked as the bad guy, and ultimately that might influence Facebook.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Does Patagonia have influencers or ambassadors on Instagram?

If so, this is a bit of virtual signaling as they're still advertising on FB but not directly.

Facebook/IG ads is one of the best ad placements left on the market, IMHO.</comment>


Terabyte smartphones are coming, thanks to new Samsung storage chip - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/01/samsungs-next-smartphones-may-have-new-1tb-storage-chip-inside/ <comment><USER2> Why would anyone need this much space? I can't even fill a TB between my desktop and backup drive combined, and that includes a lot of game and some movie backups.

<comment><USER3> Lots of photos. It's so easy to take photos, and with Live Photo's (or whatever the mini video clips are called), that storage fills up even faster.

<comment><USER2> 1) A terabyte holds 250,000+ full-res, jpg photos. To reach that number, you'd have to more than 60 photos a day for 10 years.

2) Most phones come with free (or very cheap) cloud photo backup, so many people won't even have most of their photos on local storage. Pros and other heavy photo takers could just back their phones up to a physical drive that costs very little.</comment></comment></comment>


Tech Startups Face A War For Talent - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/09/tech-startups-face-a-war-_n_873798.html <comment><USER2> I totally see this! and like this:-) I know from experience that it has become harder to get good engineers as there is a shortage of engineers and a surplus of challenging jobs. Nice pick mate!</comment>


Bill Gates: Top books to read - <AUTHOR> http://favobooks.com/enterpreneurs/46-billgates.html

<comment><USER2> Great list! Also, I loved the favobooks.com web site. It's in my browser's favorites pages.</comment>


The Internet is destroying work - <AUTHOR> http://www.salon.com/2013/07/12/the_new_proletariat_workers_of_the_cloud/

<comment><USER3> Hmmm. This title says "working class," but the title of the linked article is "The Internet's destroying work — and turning the old middle-class into the new proletariat." (capitalization as in the original, btw). Get prepared for another mental jerk when you read the subtitle of the article, which puts the responsibility for destruction on the new _economy_, which is distinct from classes. (Which aspect of the economy, deficit spending? new welfare laws? reduced military budget? bailouts? who knows, who cares! -it's all about people with money and power that I don't have, so they're Bad-) Someone needs to get their terms organized...

The article itself is full of phrases like "seems like" and other wishy-washy half-assertions. Before we get up in arms and wield terms like "destroying," let's see if we can clearly document the _changes_ the internet is creating... Oh, but then we wouldn't have sensationalist web-magazine articles to validate middle-class guilt... :)

SO, with that in mind, perhaps we can narrow the discussion down from leviathan topics like "internet, economy and classes" to the topic of "Fancy Hands," which is the web-facilitated service referred to in 90% of the paragraphs of the article. So often, that one would be forgiven for believing this article was ghost-written by FancyHands.com in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER4> Whenever technology advances, industries based on the previous ways of doing things must die off, and the next generation of workers will work equally long and hard at new occupations. Horses vs. cars, domestic workers vs. washing machines, it has happened over and over.

It's inevitably hard on the disemployed workers, as many will be unable to retrain for whatever the new jobs demand. But this is only an argument for a "social safety net", not for resisting progress.

Unfortunately this is not the whole explanation of the shrinking of the middle class. The internet is only one factor and not the biggest. The main cause is corporate takeover of governments, leading to "financialization" (i.e., make money by trading things that are only indirectly based one real goods, without producing new value) [1], oligopolistic, rent-seeking industries [2] and lack of popular influence on governments.

1\. e.g. [http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/11/financializatio...](http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/11/financialization- as-a-cause-of-economic-malaise/) 2\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent- seeking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking)

<comment><USER5> That's not true. As we've made technology advances historically we've removed working hours. It just hasn't happened with the new digital revolution.

<comment><USER4> Working hours were reduced only in the 20th century, and mainly then due to the influence of unions. There was very little reduction prior to this era - basically it was dawn to dusk on farms, then with the industrial revolution, dawn to dusk or even longer in factories, mines and other industries.

Reformers have always argued, "New tech lets us produce the same output with less work, so let's have more leisure time" \- but capital owners see it instead as an opportunity to work their employees (serfs, proletarians, then "at will" employees) the same hours and make more money.

<comment><USER6> Post Reagan era politics did a pretty good job at obliterating unions, AND, burying the history of the first half of the 20th century, eh?

The problem as I see it with either a communist welfare state or feudalism is that either extreme provides little incentive for most people to be creative/inventive, as there is little to gain for them. Alas, we seem to be swinging toward a kind of corporate feudalism, at least in the US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Please change the nonsense and purposely divisive "workingclass" title to that of the actual article.

This is a politically-charged phrase that implies that nobody else actually works, or that they don't work as hard.

<comment><USER8> working class is a term that is very specific and it is used correctly by the OP.

working class are those that don't have capital. Does not mean those with capital don't work.

People who work with Fancy Hands most certainly don't have capital.

<comment><USER9> > People who work with Fancy Hands most certainly don't have capital.

You might be surprised.

One of the wealthiest people I know is the stereotypical "cheapskate tightwad" (and he'll readily admit it). He will do pretty much anything he can to earn an extra dollar and he squanders as much of it away as possible.

He plans to retire before his 40th birthday and I suspect that he will do exactly that and live quite comfortably the rest of his life as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What's with this obsession with jobs? If all we wanted were "jobs", we could create 100 million real quickly. Just go destroy a bunch of stuff and get people to work, rebuilding everything again.

<comment><USER11> The article is trying to highlight two different types of "jobs": ones that can provide a family with a "comfortable lifestyle" and ones in which people struggle to make ends meat.

I think the article makes a far leap to say the internet is responsible for the decreasing middle class. There are many factors, such as manufacturing automation, in our changing economic conditions.

Overall, I do not think the internet will be huge catalyst for job growth - <USER2> terms of providing millions of new jobs. But it will always be a huge catalyst for economic growth.

The following was insightful:

 _" It suddenly occurred to me," wrote Packer, "that the hottest tech start- ups are solving all the problems of being twenty years old, with cash on hand, because that's who thinks them up."_

Hopefully those twenty years old developers will solve more meaningful problems than sharing cat photos.

As an aside, I'm surprised that any discussion on "basic income" \- you know it's coming - hasn't mention the Star Trek economy. Seriously, how do people in Star Trek universe survive in their economy?

<comment><USER12> > As an aside, I'm surprised that any discussion on "basic income" \- you know > it's coming - hasn't mention the Star Trek economy. Seriously, how do people > in Star Trek universe survive in their economy?

The descriptions (or, perhaps more accurately, "indicia") of the economy in Star Trek are so wildly inconsistent that its a really, really bad basis for any kind of discussion, even among fictional settings.

<comment><USER13> Why is it inconsistent? It's consistent with techno-anarchy: scarcity is a solved problem. Without finite resources there is no longer any point to capitalism, a system which allocates finite resources.

So people are left to live life how ever they see fit. No more commercials, since that's pointless. Without commercials, there's no TV shows just designed to get viewers since you no longer need them. If you manage to make something new you may as well share it with everyone (via a replicator) because... what else could you do? "Karma" is all that's left to chase.

<comment><USER12> > Why is it inconsistent?

Because it isn't internally consistent.

> It's consistent with techno-anarchy: scarcity is a solved problem.

You seem to think that I was using "inconsistent" to mean "inconsistent with some external expectations" or "inconsistent with my expectations of what is plausible", but I was referring to _internal_ consistency, not consistency with external expectations.

> Without finite resources there is no longer any point to capitalism, a > system which allocates finite resources.

Neither the absence of finite resources nor the absence of capitalism are consistent features of the economy in Star Trek.

> So people are left to live life how ever they see fit.

This is rather emphatically not a consistent feature of the economy of Star Trek.

<comment><USER13> >Because it isn't internally consistent.

Example?

>Neither the absence of finite resources nor the absence of capitalism are consistent features of the economy in Star Trek.

It is in the earth economy. Other cultures still have money, but humans do not.

>This is rather emphatically not a consistent feature of the economy of Star Trek.

Well, obviously you can't just go be a star ship captain because so many want to do this. But you certainly don't have to flip burgers at McDonald's. You can pursue any dream and it will only be your talents that decide, not your financial situation.

<comment><USER12> > > Neither the absence of finite resources nor the absence of capitalism are > consistent features of the economy in Star Trek.

> It is in the earth economy. Other cultures still have money, but humans do > not.

Well, yeah, that's claimed sometimes, but at other times the Federation _does_ have a currency [1][2], and at least some resources are apparently rationed on Earth aside from the use of money [3].

If you want to rationalize the presentations into near-constitency, you could assume that the Federation has a monetary system but also has (or at least, core worlds like Earth have) a (by early 21st century standards) extraordinarily generous ration of most commonly used goods and public services, such that most people rarely bother to acquire or use money, though some non-hobby style jobs (including Starfleet!) exist that pay money, and interaction outside of the Federation (and, quite probably, off the core worlds within the Federation) frequently requires money (as occasionally might interactions on the core worlds.) But that's just a rationalization of what is pretty clearly an incoherent body of fiction, rather than what the designed reality of the fiction is.

[1] [http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Federation_credit](http://en.memory- alpha.org/wiki/Federation_credit)

[2] [http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Money](http://en.memory- alpha.org/wiki/Money)

[3] [http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Transporter_credit](http://en.memory- alpha.org/wiki/Transporter_credit)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This article is full of bias. The writer has an anti-business agenda and cherry picked a group of examples in order to make these kind of services wrong.

If they don't pay enough to get workers, then guess what? _No one will work there!_

<comment><USER15> What a rosy Econ 101 view of the world. In reality, tons of people are desperate for money and put up with a lot of predatory business processes. Lots of people work without healthcare because they're purposely scheduled for just enough hours to make them less than full time.

[http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac- mcclelland-f...](http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac-mcclelland- free-online-shipping-warehouses-labor)

[http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2001/07/dangerous- meatpa...](http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2001/07/dangerous-meatpacking- jobs-eric-schlosser)

<comment><USER16> A lot of businesses are desperate for good workers and put up with a lot of predatory worker behaviors.

<comment><USER17> Rubbish. This is an employer's economy, and they have all the power. I can be replaced a lot easier than I can find another job.

<comment><USER13> It's _always_ an employer's economy. We call it an "employees economy" when they exploit us a bit less than they have previously. But even now, what some are calling the best time in history to be a software dev, there was a startup right here on HN complaining about how hard it was to find the perfect employee and how they've been looking _for over a year_. Could you go without income for _a year_? I sure as hell couldn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm not going to remark on the topic of Internet job annihilation because I feel like I have nothing else intelligent to say, but I wanted to add I do feel the Fancy Hands thing. Something about that entire proposition struck me as disturbing from the beginning.

"Not an elite? Then pretend you're one with your very own anonymous slave!"

How much clearer could it be that even those anonymous slaves will be replaced by robots the second that it's technically feasible.

<comment><USER19> That technical infeasibility is precisely why the business exists. If it were technically feasible, a person could purchase their own device or system to manage such tasks and Fancy Hands and similar services would become obsolete, or graduate to more complex tasks that are still as yet technically infeasible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think these discussions are always funny, the internet has not killed the working class. The working class was destroyed by the loss of manufacturing to other countries. What does the internet have to do with this? Its more about globalization.

</comment><comment><USER21> Linkbait title.

This author still thinks about economics in terms from over a 100 years ago.

Many technological advancement allow us to produce more efficiently, i.e. produce the same amount of output with less input cost, including labor. When we get to the point when we can produce all the output we need with virtually no input cost, and by the hands of an increasingly small % of the population, I'm not sure modern economic theory has anything to say about such a situation, because it is built on many implicit assumptions about the scarcity of resources which may not be true forever.

<comment><USER22> Demand can be artificially created, and goods can be intangible (digital). We can increase the amount of 'stuff' the average person buys by several orders of magnitude at least.

<comment><USER23> This specific idea is predicated on preventing piracy. If you can't do that, it won't work. And preventing piracy means comparing what someone has on their computer with some centralized ownership database. And that requires more intrusion in your personal devices than even the NSA wants.

The digital economy depends on giving powers to the government that we don't want to give them, and frankly, powers so sweeping that they'd get abused in a second too.

Plus we've all seen how digital good concentrate wealth. The top10 games make 50% of all income ? This would make things a lot worse, not better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Jaron Lanier's "Who Owns The Future" is worth reading on this subject too, fwiw.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm not sure if the Internet is destroying or just amplifying current general trends.

</comment><comment><USER25> 100 years back people said, electricity is destroying work.

</comment><comment><USER26> If your work is measured in lines of code or git commits, then you ARE a working class.

If you're scared about your future so much that you want to read every TC article, learn every new hip language and attend every meet-up, just to stay on top of things, while selling your LOC to some company, you ARE a working class.

Go be an entrepreneur and start creating value.

<comment><USER8> You mean by recombining other people's work and calling it your own?

<comment><USER26> No, by combining and creating value greater than the sum of parts!

<comment><USER8> You have it all wrong. They just need to APPEAR that they created value by hiding the fact that most of the work was already done, just enough for the next VC round.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Don't the errand-running services only create jobs? "Waiting on hold" and "making reservations" seem like positions that didn't exist before. How many people have full-time assistants?</comment>


Audit Cleared Google Privacy Practices Despite Security Flaw - <AUTHOR> https://thehill.com/policy/technology/410568-exclusive-privacy-audit-failed-to-mention-of-google-plus-security-flaw <comment><USER3> Ernst & Young also give a positive audit to Startssl/Wosign even though they had problems at the time.

For that reason Mozilla "no longer accept audits carried out by Ernst & Young Hong Kong." [0].

[0]: [https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2016/10/24/distrusting- new...](https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2016/10/24/distrusting-new-wosign- and-startcom-certificates/)

<comment><USER4> To be fair, I have never seen an external security audit do anything useful.

Either they bend to the folks paying the bills, or they flag a zillion, generally known to engineers, issues.

If you really want to make you security audit useless, hand the auditors C code. They will stare at you as though you just handed them the head of a small child.

<comment><USER5> I have personally been a part of security audits that have found critical vulnerabilities in some of the best-known tech companies on the globe.

Just because there exists a world of auditors who function as rubber stamps does not mean we all do.

<comment><USER6> I've been part to numerous audits during my career and there's always an initial findings report with the opportunity to explain away findings such that they never show up on the final report.

<comment><USER5> If that's the case then you haven't been working with good auditors.

That said, the opportunity to do this (scrub reports) is a driving decision behind many companies' choice to work with more permissive firms. If you want a rubber stamp, you can certainly get it, but if you want a true partner who will find and exploit issues you can get that too.

<comment><USER3> > if you want a true partner who will find and exploit issues you can get that > too.

Could you name such a company? This is a perfect opportunity to get to know a good auditor, actually I can't imagine how would one look for a good auditor otherwise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a witch-hunt by Murdoch, I'm guessing. 500,000 people's information with the _potential_ to have leaked, and yet Facebook and Equifax fucking _skate_ on DEMONSTRABLY having leaked well over half of America's personal information to domestic and foreign interests alike.

This is sour grapes of the worst kind.

<comment><USER8> I mean, what is it at this point, 2 days of bad press? All Murdoch properties I'm aware of covered Facebook and Equifax for a lot longer than that, and certainly didn't pretend that what they did was okay.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This story doesn't make any sense. An FTC-mandated E&Y "Privacy Audit" isn't a software security assessment and would never have been expected to either (a) uncover subtle application security flaws or (b) metabolize internal reports of subtle, fixed flaws. Nor, for that matter, is the internal discovery of a software security flaw a "breach": routine internal discovery of vulnerabilities is what good security teams do.

The reporting on this G+ story has been startlingly bad. There's apparently some juice to the narrative that Google is running headlong into a collision with the Trump administration, and so reporters seem to be starting with a public policy conclusion and working their way back. Somebody needs to start informing these people how professional software security works.

In _any_ audit situation --- PCI, HITECH, SOC-2, you name it --- there is neither a norm nor a duty to notify auditors of internally discovered security problems. Nor would any such norm be productive: it would warp internal incentives, both to discover and to properly handle vulnerabilities.

If the _auditors_ discover a security problem, that problem gets documented, just like it (typically) does with external reporters (researchers, bug bounty claimants). When that happens, you have an indication that your internal software security controls failed. But when your team finds a bug in its own code? That's a sign that the team is doing things right.

<comment><USER10> All of your characterization here is correct, but does it really make sense to classify it as an internally discovered security problem instead of a potential-or-real-breach when it was present for _years_ , trivially exploitable by third parties, and is impossible to vet? There's no way to know whether or not it was used because there was no logging in place for third- party use of user data, and apparently no audits (manual or automated) were ever performed of these APIs. Google more or less admitted that all they had to go on here was an examination of the third parties who potentially had access to the data, because they have no way to know what they actually did with it and apparently can't contact them to find out.

The reporting is definitely exaggerating the significance of the data that was exposed and making it sound like it's known that the data was collected by third parties, but it's absolutely the case that the ball was dropped here and it's inappropriate to pretend nothing happened. There's simply no way to know, which is itself a breach of user trust.

It's kind of a no-win situation here given the way the media reports on these matters, but attempting to keep it quiet was incredibly foolish - <USER2> remotely bad that happens at Google is going to get leaked by internal troublemakers now, and legal/pr should know that and should have gotten ahead of this.

<comment><USER9> There is nothing remarkable about finding a vulnerability that had been latent in a codebase for years. It is not clear to me what "ball" you believe has been "dropped" here. If it's that the first N groups of security testers that looked at this code missed the vulnerability that their N+1th found, sorry, no: that happens all the time.

<comment><USER10> If the vulnerability is 'any one of our API users could have accessed <large set of private data> over the past 3 years' that's a lot more than 'we found an obscure latent security issue'. Especially if you can't prove it didn't happen by examining logs (which they can't, because they didn't keep logs) or auditing your API users (which they couldn't).

It doesn't feel like splitting hairs to separate this from things like 'we found an obscure xss exploit internally which is now fixed'. It is explicitly a Possible Breach, not just a Bug. If you're arguing that Possible Breaches don't require disclosure, well, that's a choice to make, but it worked out poorly in this case and it will probably keep working out poorly because everything G does is under a microscope until the far right gets bored with them.

<comment><USER11> There's a strong argument against disclosure of internally discovered bugs (security or otherwise) that have no evidence of user impact. Internal efforts to find and fix bugs improve actual quality/safety but, if indiscriminately announced, harm perceived quality/safety. We have seen repeatedly how bad security reporting of actual weaknesses can drive users to more risky alternatives or behaviors, lowering actual security and privacy. It's just too easy to say that all major security defects should be announced or that no major defects should ever exist.

There are about 430 developers that could have exploited this vulnerability. There was no evidence in the available two weeks of logs of it being exploited. And the number of users and types of data available make Google+ a low value target. The decision to not announce was reasonable, common, legal, and moral.

It sets a poor standard to suggest they should have acted different because they're now under fire from people with far darker motives than reporting truth or advocating for consumer privacy. Those exploiting the story for their own gain should be shamed rather than capitulated to.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Android 4.1 Jelly Bean preview download is live - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/27/android-4-1-jelly-bean-preview-download/ <comment><USER2> Why is there no Developer Channel for Nexus owners?</comment>


THE GOOGLE CLIPS CAMERA PUTS AI BEHIND THE LENS - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/4/16405200/google-clips-camera-ai-photos-video-hands-on-wi-fi-direct <comment><USER2> What could go wrong? That's not creepy at all. This is fine.</comment>